Part 4

"He starts well," said the Lean Man. "First to make a cuckold of the husband, and then to run him through--he's half a Ratcliffe, this shiftless Dick-o'-lanthorn, after all."

"Why did you let him go with the wench, father?" put in Robert. "Dick can wield a sword if he's forced to it, and scabbards will need to be empty in a while."

"Pish! We can spare one arm, I warrant, and 'twas sweet to cry Wayne's wife up and down the country-side for what she is. The lad will wed her soon as they get free of Marshcotes, she thinks--but I know different; and 'twill eat the heart out of the Waynes to know--what, Janet! Thou look'st scared as a moor-tit," he broke off, as a trim lassie came in through the parlour door and stood at the elbow of his chair.

Janet Ratcliffe, the youngest of all the Wildwater clan, was the only one among them who could touch the old man's heart; some said it was because she was the comeliest of the women, and others vowed it was that her raven hair had caught her grandfather's fancy by contrast with the ruddy colouring and freckled cheeks that nearly every other Ratcliffe in the moorside boasted. But sure it was that whenever the Lean Man's brittle temper had to be tried, Janet was sent as tale-bearer.

"There's one would speak with you, grandfather," said the girl, coming to the elbow of his chair.

"Then bid him enter. Any man can come into Wildwater--'tis for us to say whether we let them out again."

"Nay, but 'tis a--a woman, sir. I found her wandering up and down the garden, plucking the daisies and singing to herself."

"By the Lord, we do not have so queer a guest every day! Let her come in, Janet, and we'll give her the bottoms of the ale-flagons if her song be a good one."

"But, sir--she bears a name that is not welcome here--and she talks so wildly that I fear her wits are gone."

"What name?" snarled the old man.

"She is wife to Wayne of Marsh--and her clothes are dripping--and she speaks all in riddles----"

Nicholas laughed grimly. "Bring her to me," he said--"though, 'tis no new thing, my faith, to talk to a Wayne who is scant of wit."

"There's something untoward in this," muttered Robert. "What should she want at Wildwater, if Dick's plans had not miscarried?"

"Why, he grew weary of her, belike, 'twixt here and Saxilton, and set her down by the wayside. Thou know'st the lad's fancies--they go as fast as they come in that addle-pate of his. By the Heart, what have we here?" Old Nicholas stopped, and pointed to the doorway; and the lads who were at breakfast let fall their knives with a clatter on the board.

And in truth Mistress Wayne was a wild and sorry spectacle enough, and one to hold a man in doubt whether he should shrink from her or laugh outright. "Where is the Lean Man of Wildwater? I want a word with him," she said, and looked blankly round the hall.

Nicholas Ratcliffe smiled cruelly upon her, and, "Mistress," said he, "I fear the last night's storm has used you ill. _I_ am the Lean Man you ask for. What would you?"

She carried a half-dozen daisies in her hand, plucked from the Wildwater garden, and these she held out to Nicholas with a pretty air of confidence. "I was weaving daisy-chains--red daisies, that grew out of a great vault-stone--and while I wove them my lover fell asleep."

"'Twas a poor lover to sleep at such a time. I'd none of him were I as fair as you," said Nicholas, with the same air of mock-courtesy.

"And the rain came down--red, like the daisies--and spread and spread over the stone--and dripped and dripped on to Wayne's cold forehead as he lay below----"

"They've not buried him yet, Mistress," laughed one of the youngsters.

"Oh, but they have, sir!" she answered, turning her great blue eyes on him. "They put him on to one of those little shelves that Sexton Witherlee showed me once--and then they covered him with a flat stone, with rings on it, because they knew that was the only way to hold him back from haunting me. But he doesn't heed the stone, and I want Dick--I want my lover, who is so big and strong, to wake and stand between Wayne's ghost and me."

Nicholas Ratcliffe watched every pitiful turn of speech and gesture, and laughed to himself as he drew her on. "So your lover sleeps, Mistress?" he said, softly.

"Yes, amongst the red daisies. And I could not wake him, though I tried my hardest. And, oh, sir, will you tell him that we shall never be in time, never be in time, unless he does not soon bestir himself?"

"I'll tell him, never fear. Robert, what dost make of it? Is't not as I told thee, a night's wandering among the bogs has turned her wits?"

"There's more in it; what is this tale of blood?" muttered Robert. "God, yes, and her bosom is stained with something of a deeper dye than rain."

"The wind moaned so in the heather, all the long night," wailed the woman, "and I was cold, and hungry, and sadly frightened. Why will he not wake? Two little corpse-candles are fluttering over the marsh--how they shine, like the dead man's eyes! There was Wayne lying there at Marsh, and they said they had closed his eyes--but I knew, I knew! His eyes burned--and wherever I moved they followed me--sir, will you not bid my lover wake?"

She turned from the old man suddenly, her wandering fancy caught by the beat of horse-hoofs up the road. "That is the post-chaise, come to carry us to Saxilton," she said.

"To be sure," cried Nicholas. "The chaise is to carry you and Dick to Saxilton. When will you be wedded, Mistress?"

"Oh, soon, very soon. And then, I think, I shall not fear Wayne of Marsh at all--his ghost cannot come between man and wife, can it? See, see!" she cried, running to the window. "A horse! But there's no post-chaise with it--how is that?"

The rider dismounted at the door and entered; and his likeness to Nicholas of the weasel face was plainer now than it had been when he talked with the Sexton in Marshcotes graveyard. Mistress Wayne ran up to him and put both hands on his shoulders, and laughed a little, roguishly.

"Did not my lover bid you bring a chaise?" she said.

Red Ratcliffe stared at her. "Your lover?--Ah, now I know you, Mistress. Well, no, he gave me no commands, for the best of reasons."

"I know," she said carelessly, moving to the window again. "He sleeps, and 'tis unkind of him when there is so great need for haste. Well-away, but I must keep watch at the window, or the chaise will pass us by."

"Dick was slain yesternight, grandfather," said the horseman, with a keen glance at Nicholas.

"Slain, was he?" snarled the Lean Man, "whose hand went to the slaying?"

"One of the Long Waynes of Cranshaw met him in the kirkyard and ran a sword through him. I had it just now from a farm-hand as I rode across the moor, and I turned back to tell you of it. Shameless Wayne was drinking at the time, they tell me."

"Well, we can spare fool Dick, my grandson, though I say it, and 'twill give us the chance of feud we've hungered for these years past. And Shameless Wayne was drinking, was he? He lost his chance of fighting his father's quarrel? That's bonnie news, lad, and news to be spread far and wide about the moor. 'Twill damp their pride, I warrant."

"And the feud will be up again," growled Red Ratcliffe, with a glance at Janet.

"Ay, they all but cut us off once, these Waynes, but kindness bade them let us breed; and now our turn has come; and Marsh House, that used to grow so thick with them, holds only four tender lads and a half-man who sinks his wits deeper every day in the wine-barrel. By the Heart, we shall live healthier at Wildwater when yonder sword is fleshed again and the moor is cleared of Waynes!"

He pointed to a great two-handled sword that hung above the mantel--a weapon, too heavy for these lighter-armed days, which had hung idle since the quarrel between Wayne and Ratcliffe was last healed.

Janet, who had been listening pale and woe-begone from the door, went still of face when Shameless Wayne was spoken of. "Poor Ned! He will take it hard," she murmured.

Again Red Ratcliffe glanced at her. "Till the moor is cleaned of Waynes," he echoed.

"Cleaned?" echoed the mad woman, turning from the window suddenly and facing the Lean Man. "Nay, 'twill never be cleaned, for it dripped down, right down to the vault-floor underneath."

Nicholas, weary of mocking her, pointed a forefinger at the door. "Get ye gone, Mistress; there is neither room nor welcome for you here," he said.

"But, sir," began Janet, "she is beside her wits; it were shame----"

"Peace, child! If ever I hear one of my house pleading for a Wayne, by God, they shall feel the rough side of my hand."

Mistress Wayne stood halting in childish perplexity. "What would you, sir? I cannot go till Dick wakes up. What if he woke and found that I had gone?"

"We'd send him after you," snapped Nicholas, "for ye were the fittest couple ever I set eyes on. Go, baby, and wander up and down the moor, and tell all the folk you meet how you robbed Wayne of Marsh of honour."

"Wayne of Marsh?" she whispered, glancing over her shoulder and into every corner of the room. "Is he here, then? Here, too, when I thought I had got away from those great, staring eyes of his!"

"He's close behind you, Mistress. Run, lest he hold you by the throat!" laughed one of the youngsters, throwing wide the door for her.

A panic seized her, and without word or backward glance she ran out into the courtyard. Janet made as if to follow, for pity's sake, but the Lean Man called her back peremptorily.

"Does he not know," murmured the girl, "that 'tis madness to deal harshly with the fairy-kist? And she so pitiful, too, poor weakling."

"I go a-hunting, lads, soon as dinner is off the board," said Nicholas, stretching his legs before the peats.

Janet forgot her care of Mistress Wayne; for she knew that tone of the Lean Man's, and mistrusted it.

"Do we ride with you, father?" asked Robert from across the hearth.

"Not one of you. By the Dog, do ye think I would let any younger man rob me of the first blow? Ride in when that is struck, and welcome--but pest take whichever of you tries to tap Wayne blood before to-morrow."

"And what of the dead man, sir?" put in Red Ratcliffe. "Dick's body lies in the Bull tavern at Marshcotes, so they told me."

"Go thou to Marshcotes, lad, and see that he's brought up to Wildwater. Ay, ride off at once; 'tis unmeet that even the weakling of our folk should lie stark within a wayside tavern."

"And there'll be the grave to see to," said Red Ratcliffe, getting to his feet.

"More than one, haply," laughed the Lean Man. "They say that Sextons love to see a Ratcliffe go a-hunting, and----"

He stopped, remembering Janet, and stole a glance at her. "There, lass," he said, with rough tenderness, "'tis men's talk, this, and it whitens thy bonnie cheek. Go to thy spinning-wheel till dinner-time."

"We are short of flax, grandfather. I--I--I cannot spin," she faltered, not moving from the elbow of his chair. For his threats touched Shameless Wayne, and she was loth to go out of ear-shot while he was in mood to tell them what his purpose was.

"Go, child," he said curtly, pointing to the parlour door.

She went reluctantly, and Red Ratcliffe followed her a moment later, on pretext of fetching some matter that was needful to his ride to Marshcotes.

"So, Janet, thou didst want to hear the Lean Man's purpose?" he said, closing the door behind him and leaning carelessly against its panels.

"Whatever I wished or did not wish, cousin, I lacked no speech of thine," she answered, turning her head away.

"Neither dost thou lack flax, though thou wast ready to swear as much awhile since," said Red Ratcliffe drily, pointing to where her spinning-wheel stood in the window-niche, the flax hanging loose on the distaff.

She crossed impatiently to the door, and would have left him, but he checked her with a rough laugh.

"Wast over eager, cousin, to hear the Lean Man's purpose toward Wayne of Marsh," he said. "Say, is it true--what they whisper up and down the country-side--that thou wert friendly to this Wayne the Shameless?"

"And if I were, sir, what is't to thee?" she flashed, turning round to him.

"What is't to me? Shall I tell thee again, girl, that I've sworn to wed thee?"

"And shall I answer again that I will wed thee when apple-trees grow----?"

"The Lean Man has bidden me prosper with my suit."

"I shall persuade him otherwise."

"Wilt thou?" he snarled. "Even if I tell him what gossip has to say of thee and Shameless Wayne?"

Her face took that firmness that mention of Wayne's name never failed to bring there. "Thou _darest_ not tell him," she said; "for then thou would'st be sure I would never look thy way again."

The shaft aimed true, for Red Ratcliffe's passion for his cousin had grown to fever-heat during these latter days. Finding no answer, he watched her go out by the door that led to the garden; and then he turned on his heel and passed through the hall, meaning to saddle his horse forthwith and ride down to Marshcotes on his errand.

"The Lean Man is right," he muttered, as he went out. "'Tis time that this Wayne of Marsh was out of harm's way."

His hand was already on the door-latch when old Nicholas himself, still seated by the hearth, detained him, though a while since he had bidden him make all speed to Marshcotes.

"I've a word for thy ear, lad," said the Lean Man. "Come sit beside me and tell me whether 'tis well planned or no."

For a half hour they sat there, the young rogue and the old, their lean faces and red heads pressed close together. And now the Lean Man let a chuckle escape, and again Red Ratcliffe would fetch a crack of laughter.

"By the Mass, sir, your wits keep sharp!" cried the younger, raising his voice on the sudden. "The plan goes bonnily as wedding bells. First, to go hunting----"

"Hush, fool, there's Janet in the room behind," snapped the Lean Man; "and she has less liking for sword-music than her bravery warrants."

"Janet is out of hearing. I saw her go down the garden-path just now."

"Well, 'tis time thou wast off and about this business. Bring back Dick's body, and forget not to ply old Witherlee with questions when thou'rt seeing him about the grave. He's a poor fool, is Sexton Witherlee, and he'll tell thee all we want to know as soft as butter."

Janet, soon as her cousin was gone, slipped out into the garden--budding with spring leafage, yet cold for all that with memory of the storm just over-past--and sought the lane that led up to the pasture-fields. This wooing of Red Ratcliffe's was growing irksome to her, backed as it was by the Lean Man's favour; nor had she guessed till now that any shared the secret of her love for Shameless Wayne. Yet for all her own troubles, she found leisure to think kindly of the mad woman, who had come in such piteous plight to Wildwater and had been turned away by so rude a storm of jests and harshness. Where was Mistress Wayne now, she wondered?

Shading her eyes against the sunlight, which was fitful, chill and dazzling, she looked for the frail woman. At first she could see nothing save the bare green of scanty herbage, the swart lines of wall, the dark, straight hollows running up the fields to mark where the plough had once on a time furrowed the hard face of the land. Then she made out a little figure, moving up toward where the topmost field curved nakedly across the steel-blue sky.

A great compassion held the girl as she watched Mistress Wayne clamber up the hill and turn at the summit and move along the sky-edge, her frailty showing pitilessly clear against the empty space behind her. The wrath of God held no place in the calculations of the Ratcliffes; but Janet had learned awe of the self-same storm-winds that had taught cruelty to her folk, and she trembled now to think that they had turned a want-wit--one of God's own people, according to the moorside superstition--into the heart of the pathless and bog-riddled heath.

"Come back!" she cried, running up the fields. "Come back! You cannot cross the marshes out beyond there!"

Mistress Wayne looked down after the cry had been twice repeated, and stopped a moment; then hurried forward faster than before. Janet quickened pace, fear gaining on her lest the other should be lost to view. The flying figure above moved with a lagging step now, and Janet overtook her at the wall-side which divided moor and field.

"You will not take me back, not take me back?" pleaded Mistress Wayne, shrinking close against the wall.

"I would see you safe to the lower ground, Mistress. Where would you go?"

The kindliness in Janet's voice wrought a sudden change in Mistress Wayne. She forgot her dread of the eyes which had haunted her throughout the night, and awoke to a keen sense of her present misery. "I will go home," she said--"home to Marsh House. I am faint, and very hungry. They gave me milk and a piece of oaten bread at a farmstead on the moor, but that is a long, long while ago--longer than I could tell you--is the way far to Marsh?"

"Not far," said Janet, and then, not knowing how else to find her a place of shelter, she took the little woman by the hand and led her down the moor until they reached the rough brack, cut from the solid peat and flanked on either hand by clumps of bilberry, which led to Marshcotes; and further toward Marsh House she would have gone with her, had not a glance at the sun told her that she could scarce get back to Wildwater before the dinner-hour.

"The road lies straight to Marshcotes," she said, stopping and pointing down the highway.

"Will you not come all the way with me?" pleaded Mistress Wayne, nestling closer to the girl's side.

"I cannot, Mistress. Grandfather may have lacked me as 'tis, and I dare not overstay the dinner-hour, lest he should guess what errand has brought me out of doors."

"No," said the other, simply, "he would not like thee to go gathering red-eyed daisies from the stone-- Why, now, I know my way," she broke off, a light of recognition stealing into her empty face. "Yonder is Withens on the hill, and over there is Marshcotes; and there's a field-path, is there not, that takes me out of the high-road down to Marsh--an odd little path, all full of rounded pebbles, that creeps down the hill so craftily because it fears the steepness? Oh, yes, I know the way to Marsh."

"Fare ye well," said Janet, softly, with the tears close behind her voice. "Go home to Marsh, Mistress, and God give you friends there."

She watched the little figure move down the road, stopping here and there to pluck a spray of rusted heather or a half-opened wild flower from the banks on either hand, until the shoulder of the peat-rise hid her. Fierce in hatred or in love was Janet, like all her folk, and her pity for Mistress Wayne had grown already to a sort of hard defiance of those who could wrong so frail a creature.

"'Tis such as Red Ratcliffe who think it sport to mock the weaklings," she said, turning sharp about for Wildwater. "He would be very brave, I doubt, were he to meet yond little body on the moor--had she no men folk with her."

But Red Ratcliffe came too late to cross Mistress Wayne's path, though he was riding out of the Wildwater gates at the moment, bent on seeing to the disposal of the body which lay in the Marshcotes tavern. As Janet was half toward home, he passed her at the gallop, but an ugly smile was all his greeting and he went by without once slackening pace. The girl misliked his silence; it was his way to bluster with her at each new opportunity, and a score of shapeless fears went with her as she hurried back to bear her grandfather company at dinner. What was old Nicholas planning when he had sent her out of hall this morning? Bloodshed and unrest were in the air; the whole wide moor seemed throbbing with an undernote of tumult, and Shameless Wayne had but the one life to lose. _But the one life to lose_--the thought maddened her. Real danger, danger that stood before her in the road and spoke its purpose plainly, she could meet unflinchingly; but the perils that waited on Wayne's steps were formless and unnumbered. She would not think of them, and to ease her mind she turned again to thoughts of Red Ratcliffe, his mad passion, his cruelty and unruliness.

"Christ, how I hate him--how I hate him!" she cried between set teeth, as she passed through the Wildwater gates.

Red Ratcliffe, meanwhile, was riding hot and fast. His cousin's scorn, of which he had had full measure earlier in the day, flicked him on the raw all down the road to Marshcotes; and his thoughts dwelt less on the brother for whom he was going to order a grave than on the fierce, quick-witted lass whom he had sworn to wed. He was in no good mood, accordingly, when he reached Marshcotes and drew rein at the Sexton's door.

The Sexton's wife, hearing the sound of horse-hoofs on the road without, hobbled to the window and thrust her face between the plants that lined the sill. Her eyes went hard and her mouth turned downward as she saw who was her visitor. She was in no better mood, indeed, than Red Ratcliffe himself; for she had been up betimes after her long ringing of the death-bell, and the hundred-and-one bits of housework she had got through had not been lightened by the discovery of Mistress Wayne's flight. It was no welcome hospitality that she had given to Wayne's faithless wife; but it was hospitality for all that, and it troubled the old woman no little that her guest should have wandered, none knew whither. So tart her mood was, indeed, that the Sexton had long since been driven forth of doors by the goodwife's tongue, and had taken refuge in the graveyard which was working-ground and home in one to the gentle man of dreams.

"Is Witherlee in the house?" cried Ratcliffe, catching sight of Nanny's face between the window-plants.

The little old woman came to the door and stood there, arms akimbo. "He isn't," she answered, looking steadfastly at the horse's ears.

"Then where is he? I must have a word with him before I go back to Wildwater."

"Where is he? Where ony honest man is like to be--following his trade." Nanny misliked all Ratcliffes, and she never troubled to hide her feelings from gentle or simple.

"By the Mass, thou'rt shorter of tongue than any woman I've set eyes on yet. Drop thy fooling, woman, for there has news come to Wildwater which sets a keen edge on my temper."

"Ay, marry? Then try th' edge on me--for I'm reckoned hard, and hev blunted more men's tempers nor ye can count years. Witherlee's i' th' kirkyard, if that's what ye're axing. Mebbe ye've met th' Brown Dog on your way across th' moor, an' he's warned ye to be beforehand, like, wi' ordering your grave?"

Ratcliffe scowled as he turned his horse's head. "Recall now that the Sexton's wife is friendly to the Waynes, and makes a boast of it," he said, glancing sharply at her.

A quick retort came to Nanny's tongue, and she hungered to out with it; but, being a prudent body even where the most unruly of her members was in case, answered quietly, "When gentlefolks come to blows," she said, "sich as me an' Witherlee are quiet, an' tak our pickings, an' if we choose sides at all, we lean toward them as gi'es us th' most butter to our bread."

"Stick to that creed, Nanny," said the other, with a rough laugh over his shoulder. "For 'tis apt to go hard at times with friends of the Waynes, and if we caught thee crossing the scent after the hunt was well up--well, thou hast heard of our kind ways with enemies."

Red Ratcliffe had no sooner disappeared among the graves that stood at the far side of the road, after hitching his horse's bridle to the wicket, than Nanny's neighbour ran in from next door--a big-faced, big-boned woman, who went through life with a keen regard for everybody's business but her own.